Super Mario Brothers is Super According to Most People! By Ethel C. Fenig

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/emsuper_mario_brothersem_is_super_according_to_most_people.html

Weirdness and deviancy may make headlines — maybe because they are weird and deviant — but most Americans — indeed most people — want to relax and enjoy with friends and family a bit of fantasy to which they can relate.  Perhaps that is why the opening of Super Mario Bros. Movie has smashed box-office records. 

‘Super Mario Bros. Movie’ Box Office: All the Records Smashed on Opening Weekend

It’s-a blockbuster! “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” an animated adventure based on the classic video game, crushed the competition with its jaw-dropping $204.6 million domestic and $377 million global debut over the long Easter weekend.

Those results far exceeded expectations and even surpassed the starts of recent installments in Universal’s biggest franchises, like “Jurassic World Dominion” ($145 million domestically) and “Fast and Furious 9” ($70 million). So, expect a sequel to be announced faster than you can say “Let’s-a go!”

“The box office just kept growing and growing,” marvels Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic distribution. “It’s a tremendous worldwide debut, and the movie has a clear runway.”

And not only families with youngsters showed up, this non-niche movie was resonating with males and females, young and old, who grew up with Mario, Luigi, and other inhabitants of the fantastical Mushroom Kingdom.

So, a movie about loving minority brothers — okay, ethnic Italian-Americans with mustaches and dark hair named Mario and Luigi — and their fantastical adventures based on a video game, is relatable not only to Americans of all ages, economic, social and other categories but also to people around the world.  Interestingly, while the professional movie reviewers humpfed.

America’s Censorship Regime Goes on Trial by Jenin Younes

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-censorship-regime-goes-on-trial-missouri-biden

Missouri v. Biden will test the government’s ability to suppress speech in the name of fighting ‘misinformation’

Ernest Ramirez, a car-wash technician in a small, south Texas town, led a simple but fulfilling life with his son, Ernesto Junior. Junior was a “wonderful child, full of smiles.” Ramirez had raised his son alone; he’d never known his own father and sought to provide Junior with the paternal love he had missed. A talented baseball player, Junior dreamed of playing professionally. The two lived paycheck to paycheck but were happy because, as Ramirez put it, they had each other.

Then, on April 19, 2021, 16-year-old Junior—who had no previous health problems—received the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Five days later, the young athlete collapsed while running. By the time the elder Ramirez arrived at the hospital, having been told he could not ride in the ambulance with his son, Junior was dead.

According to the autopsy report, the cause of Junior’s death was an “enlarged heart.” Upon receiving the news, Ramirez lost all desire to go on living. But after the initial shock subsided, Ramirez decided to travel and speak about Junior’s fate, in hopes that he could help other families avoid similar tragedies.

That plan proved more difficult than Ramirez anticipated. In September 2021, GoFundMe removed an account he had opened to raise money for a trip to the nation’s capital to share his son’s story. “The content of your fundraiser falls under our ‘Prohibited Conduct’ section,” the company’s email explained. Ramirez lost the donations he had thus far received. Two months later, Twitter took down a photograph Ramirez had posted depicting him standing beside Junior’s open casket, along with the caption “My good byes to my Baby Boy” followed by three brokenheart emojis. Even a father’s simple expression of grief was apparently forbidden by the social media platform’s government-supported censorship regime.

Merit Over Identity Dismantling DEI bureaucracies is the key to reviving American universities.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/higher-ed-must-choose-merit-over-identity

Editor’s note: The following is adapted from the author’s remarks at a debate arguing the resolution, “Resolved, that academic DEI programs should be abolished,” co-hosted by the MIT chapter of the Adam Smith Society and the MIT Free Speech Alliance on April 4.

I start from the following proposition: being female is not an accomplishment. My being female should play no role in my being hired for a job. Of course, my sex undoubtedly has made me the target of sex preferences on numerous occasions, thus casting doubt on any actual qualifications I might presume to possess.

My being female should be particularly irrelevant in a university. Until recently, universities were dedicated to the Enlightenment ideal of universal knowledge. A male Chinese engineer and a female Nigerian engineer may have no spoken language in common, but they can communicate through the universal languages of mathematics and physics. Whether the buildings they erect stand or fall depends not on their nationality or sex but on their mastery of engineering principles.

I will go further. Being black, gay, or gender-fluid are also not accomplishments, and should have nothing to do with faculty hiring or student admissions. The only thing that should matter when, say, a medical school hires a researcher in pancreatic cancer is whether that oncologist is the best in his field.

The diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy is the nemesis of the Enlightenment ideal of knowledge. It puts relentless pressure on every academic department to hire on the basis of race and sex, not on the basis of intellectual achievement. Every faculty search today is a desperate effort to find even remotely qualified minority or female candidates. Being female or a non-Asian minority confers an enormous advantage in the hiring and tenure process.

Central Bank Digital Currencies: Funny Money That Will Destroy What Is Left of Private Property, Free Markets, and Personal Liberty by J.B. Shurk

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19553/central-bank-digital-currencies

[E]ven when you have followed every law to the letter and paid every fee to the cent, there is still no guarantee that government agents will not later invoke eminent domain laws to swipe what you own because they believe they can use your private property more fruitfully for the “public good” – and, since Kelo v. New London, even for someone else’s private good. So much for private ownership.

Competition, in theory, forces markets to naturally discard bad and expensive products, while keeping the prices of the best products low…. In practice, however, mature students of capitalism understand that entrepreneurs are never in search of markets for competition but rather conditions for maintaining monopoly.

The end result is that capitalists are always in pursuit of ways in which they may take advantage of laws and regulations, specialized knowledge, government contracts, or other exclusionary mechanisms to restrict potential competitors from ever entering the market.

The usefulness of money over traditional bartering for goods and services comes from its three chief functions providing (1) a unit of account, (2) a store of value, and (3) a medium of exchange.

[O]ver the last century and a half, the important steps have all been the same: First, some form of paper money is introduced and backed by the government’s promise to pay the holder of each note a fixed sum in gold or silver. Next, the introduction of a private central bank comes into existence holding a de facto monopoly power to print paper money according to its best judgment for maintaining a healthy national economy. Finally, the gold or silver backing of those paper money currencies is revoked.

[G]overnments… spend money like drunken sailors precisely because central banks right across the street will buy up their debt and facilitate the printing of more money. How could politicians object to an arrangement that allows them to spend recklessly without any normal free market consequences?

Now with the central banks printing money and reckless government spending pushing Western economic systems to the brink, a new kind of financial hocus-pocus has been proposed: central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

If governments and central banks control the creation, distribution, and exchange of virtual money, whatever remains of free markets will disappear. If governments and central banks monitor every transaction between consumers and producers, then all industries will be subjugated to the centralized command of the State. If governments and central banks assert the legal power to determine who may store value, how much value may be personally stored, and how long that value will be permitted to last, then whatever remains of private property will cease to exist. If governments and central banks maintain a digital monopoly over the only legalized forms of money, then they may redistribute wealth or penalize personal behavior without regard for individual rights or limits to their control.

No doubt propaganda campaigns will cloak this oppressive monitoring in the West’s own “politically correct” language of fighting “hate” or “racism” or “climate change” or the next COVID-like scare, but the West’s system of control over its citizens will be no different from the Chinese communist version: Individuals will have their digital wealth confiscated or replenished according to whether their behavior conforms to the strictures of the State.

[A]n overhaul of the financial system and a transition to mandated CBDCs threaten what remains of Westerners’ personal liberties.

[T]hose who value liberty know that personal ownership and the unfettered exchange of goods, services, and ideas remain the bedrock of those free nations that refuse to be enslaved.

Liz Peek: The one pivot Republicans could make to start winning again

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/one-pivot-republicans-make-winning

Republicans have an abortion problem, and there is only one Party leader who can fix it: Donald Trump.

Let me explain. Like the proverbial dog chasing the bus, the GOP spent years campaigning on the promise to appoint Supreme Court justices who would repeal Roe v. Wade but when finally successful, had no idea how to navigate the resulting political landscape. Democrats have used the reversal of Roe and Republicans’ subsequent anti-abortion initiatives to paint the party as extreme, thereby winning over women and younger voters.

The overturning of Roe handed abortion policy back to the states, where it will stay for the foreseeable future. Our country is so divided on the issue that Congress is unlikely to pass a nationwide law any time soon.

Given that power, some red states like Texas have enacted draconian laws banning all or nearly all abortions, a position that is unpopular with the majority of Americans. Other states have had long-standing restrictions on the books that were not enforceable because of Roe; now, some of those are in play.

Wisconsin, for instance, has a statute from 1849 that banned most abortions. That law is under review by the state’s Supreme Court. Just recently, Badger State residents voted to fill a seat on that court; a Democrat who favors abortion rights won that race by a shockingly wide margin after the contest became the most expensive such match-up in Wisconsin’s history. Because of that win, liberals now hold a majority on the state court, for the first time in decades. 

Remember that Donald Trump won Wisconsin in 2016, and then lost it in 2020 to Joe Biden, both by narrow margins; it is truly a “swing state”. In the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans actually gained seats in Wisconsin’s state legislature. So, the recent loss of the court seat, driven by the dispute over abortion, should be a wake-up call to Republicans.

Say Hello To The EPA Motor Company, Say Goodbye To Freedom

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/12/say-hello-to-the-epa-motor-company-say-goodbye-to-freedom/

How can a regulatory agency force carmakers to sell electric cars?

History may someday record today as the beginning of the end of the internal combustion engine – and of individual liberty in the U.S.

According to news reports, the EPA is scheduled to release proposed auto emissions standards today on new car sales so stringent that the only way for automakers to meet them would be to shift two-thirds of their fleet to electric.

But wait. How can a regulatory agency do that? Consumers aren’t demanding electric cars. Lawmakers didn’t vote to force them on the public. The Environmental Protection Agency knows better, though, and, unless it’s neutered, plans to force EVs on you – for your own good.

As the Washington Post helpfully explains, “while the rule changes wouldn’t order or require auto companies to sell a certain number of electric vehicles, it would set emissions limits so tightly the only way to comply would be to sell large percentages of EVs.”

To be clear, we are not talking about air pollution. We are talking about emissions of carbon dioxide, which is not a pollutant but which the EPA has assumed the power to regulate.

The stated goal is to have up to 67% of new cars sold by 2032 be fully electric. (Today, EVs make up a tiny 6% of auto sales.)

Why Palestinians Cannot Resume Peace Talks with Israel by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19574/palestinians-israel-peace-talks

Once a Palestinian leader makes such a serious (and false) allegation against Jews [such as “violent storming of the al-Aqsa Mosque”], he is telling the Arabs and Muslims that the Jews… should therefore be fought against, not welcomed as peace partners.

If you tell your people (again, falsely) that the Israelis are perpetrating “war crimes,” “desecrating mosques” and “stealing land,” what will the Palestinians think of you when they see you sitting with an Israeli? They will denounce you as a “traitor” and call for your death.

By describing the Jews as “colonizers,” [Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad] Shtayyeh is seeking to send a message that the Jews have no religious or historical connection to their homeland, Israel.

In the eyes of Shtayyeh and many Palestinians, all Jews living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea are “colonizers” and “settlers.” These Palestinians see no difference between a Jew living in a Jewish community in the West Bank and a Jew living in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. For them, all Jews are foreigners who have no connection whatsoever to Israel and Jewish holy sites and no right ever to live there. Period.

Palestinian leaders such as Shtayyeh are straightforwardly saying that they see Israel as one big illegal settlement that must be eradicated… [and not] as a place for anyone other than Muslims.

[C]ontrary to the false claim made by Shtayyeh and other Palestinian leaders, the Jews who visit the holy site have never set foot inside the al-Aqsa Mosque.

One of those who have failed to call out the Palestinians for their antisemitism and lies is US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“Palestinians and Israelis alike are experiencing growing insecurity, growing fear in their homes, in their communities, in their places of worship,” Blinken argued.

If the Palestinians are “experiencing growing insecurity,” it is because they are enabling terrorists to operate freely against Israel within their own communities. If the Palestinians want to live in their homes in security and without fear, they could stop terrorists from planning and executing terror attacks against Israel. If the Palestinians want to feel safe in their worship places, they could stop attacking and harassing Jews….

The Israeli army does not send its soldiers to Palestinian cities for fun. The only reason Israeli troops enter Palestinian cities and towns is to arrest terrorists or foil terror attacks that are being planned.

The Israeli security forces are actually forced to launch these counterterrorism operations because the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, are not fulfilling their obligations under the terms of their agreements with Israel to prevent and combat terrorism.

Instead, Abbas and the Palestinian leadership continue to glorify terrorists and to reward them and their families financially through the infamous “Pay-for-Slay” program. These are payments for killing Jews – like Murder, Inc.

In a place such as the West Bank that has lived off handouts from Europe, the US, Qatar and Iran, and where the Palestinian Authority never bothered to build any kind of industrial or self-sustaining economic base, paying people to murder Jews has, in a poor region, become a booming jobs program.

Every day, every Jew in Israel literally walks around with a bounty on his or her head. If you are a Jew in Israel, every day is “hunting season.”

In the world of Palestinian leaders, a terrorist is entitled to murder or wound Jews, but when the Jews manage to foil the attack or kill the terrorist, the Jews should be condemned for perpetrating “crimes” and “violating international law.”

What is more bizarre is that Blinken, who did not utter a word to refute the lies coming out of Abbas’s mouth, instead chose to praise the Palestinian leader: “I also appreciate, Mr. President, your consistent and resolute stance against terrorism.”

For the Biden Administration, a Palestinian leader who glorifies terrorists as “heroes and martyrs” and pays their families monthly salaries deserves praise for his “stance against terrorism.” If this US position was not so dangerous, it would be a sad joke.

If the Biden administration wants to understand why Palestinian leaders cannot resume any “peace process” with Israel, Blinken and the State Department would be advised to listen to the anti-Israel statements and lies of Abbas and Shtayyeh. These lies include charges that Israel is committing “war crimes,” “extra-judicial killings,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “apartheid.”

As long as Palestinian leaders continue to incite violence against Israel and Jews, these leaders will never return to any negotiating table with Israel.

Naïve Americans and gullible Europeans keep giving these leaders every incentive to continue their program of “Murder, Inc.” by rewarding them with “free” money for terrorism — with no strings attached. Under those terms, who wouldn’t continue killing Jews — or anyone? It is a gold mine.

Finally, these leaders might simply find it more comfortable to perpetuate the drama of the “cause” rather than the anonymous, less-than-heroic tedium of running a state. Unless, of course, that state could entail driving out the Jews.

As the Biden Administration continues to state its commitment to a “two-state negotiated solution” between the Palestinians and Israel, Palestinian leaders are pursuing their campaign to vilify Israel and demonize Jews. This campaign, which is manifest mostly in the rhetoric of the leaders and the Palestinian media, mosques and schools, has made it impossible – not to mention personally dangerous – for any Palestinian leader to seek a negotiated and peaceful settlement with Israel.

How Fashionable to Prescribe the Cruellest Cuts Peter Smith

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/society/2023/04/how-fashionable-to-prescribe-the-cruellest-cuts/

Suppose I decided one fine day to self-identify as a non-binary pineapple. Je suis un ananas. Mes pronoms sont Ze, Zir, Zirs et Zirself. I forgot to mention, a French pineapple.

You might understandably think I’m mentally unbalanced. But, being a kindly sort of person, you might humour me. If your young son or daughter came home from school one day claiming that they were pineapples, you would not humour them for long. Maybe five minutes, before you told them not to be silly and to go wash their hands before having something to eat and drink.

Children are suggestible but I found both as a child and as a parent that a sharp dismissive grounding retort, particularly from a dad, was usually enough to dispel unfounded anxieties and delusions. Before you knew it, little Johnny or Jill was playing happily if young or preoccupied with juvenile pursuits if older. What you don’t do is to indulge fantasies beyond a playful and indulgent few minutes. What you certainly don’t do is to affirm fantasies; unless it’s Santa Claus. Unfortunately our society, or an influential segment of it, including the political class, sees virtue in affirming dangerous and debilitating fantasies in children and teenagers.

When a child or teenager believes they have been assigned the wrong biological sex; that really they are a male with female anatomy or a female with male anatomy, then they are living a fantasy. That must be our assumption. There is a gulf of genetic difference between males and females going way beyond surface appearances. If the fantasy persists, the only reasonable conclusion is that the youngster concerned is mentally troubled and in need of professional help; help which is squarely aimed at ridding the affected youngster of their delusion and bringing them back to reality. That isn’t the prevailing zeitgeist among officialdom.

‘Splintered’ Court Ruling Throws J6 Prosecution Into Chaos True justice will only be served when gutless judges on the district court finally start to toss this bogus charge or the higher court delivers a well-deserved smackdown in a final decision.  By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/10/splintered-court-ruling-throws-j6-prosecution-into-chaos/

A Massachusetts man on Friday was charged with a felony related to his participation in the protest at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Mark Sahady already faced misdemeanors for his nonviolent and brief jaunt through the building that afternoon, but the Justice Department decided to add the common “obstruction of an official proceeding” charge to Sahady’s case on April 7.

That same day, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw Sahady—and more than 300 January 6 defendants charged with the same obstruction felony—a potential lifeline. In what one judge described as a “splintered decision,” a three-judge panel narrowly reversed a lower court ruling that tossed the obstruction count against three Capitol protesters. D.C. District Court Judge Carl Nichols dismissed the charge last year largely based on the argument that the statute “requires that the defendant have taken some action with respect to a document, record, or other object in order to corruptly obstruct, impede or influence an official proceeding.”

A fair reading of the law proves Nichols is correct. Passed in 2002 in the wake of the Enron scandal as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, section 1512(c)(2) closed a legal loophole related to evidence tampering. The law applies to “whoever corruptly . . . otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” It’s a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

When he signed the bill into law in 2002, President George W. Bush, as I explained here, noted that the word “corruptly” would compel the government to prove a defendant’s “criminal state of mind” and the overall provision must not infringe “on the constitutional right to petition the Government for redress of grievances.”

But that hasn’t prevented Attorney General Merrick Garland from weaponizing the statute in exactly that way for more than two years. Dozens of defendants have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial. Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon Shaman,” spent months in solitary confinement and was denied bail before Garland’s prosecutors successfully tormented him into pleading guilty to obstruction. Judge Royce Lamberth, who repeatedly denied his release, sentenced Chansley to 41 months in prison.

The Opening of the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tel Aviv The profound significance. by Rachel Avraham

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-opening-of-the-azerbaijani-embassy-in-tel-aviv/

With the grand opening of the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tel Aviv, a new reality is being fostered in the Middle East and this new reality is a great asset to the West. Lev Spivak, who heads Aziz, an Azerbaijani Israeli cultural organization in Israel, stated in an exclusive interview, “I think it is good that they opened the embassy. We waited for many years for this to happen. It will also influence political relations. It will open many more doors for cooperation.” Camilia Ioffe, a famous Israeli Azerbaijani opera singer, concurred: “What happened is historic. This is good for both states. There will be exchanges between the peoples for various things.”

The grand opening of the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tel Aviv definitely assists the West’s struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is because it helps to form a strategic alliance between Turkey, Israel and Azerbaijan, who can stand together united against the mullahs in Tehran. With the assistance of this strategic alliance, South Azerbaijanis can be empowered to secede from Iran together with all of the other ethnic minorities in the country, which includes Balochs, Kurds, Turkmen, Ahwaz, Lors, etc. In the end, this strategic alliance can empower Iran’s ethnic minorities to divide up Iran into a series of little countries, while giving whatever sliver is left to the heir of the Pahlavi dynasty, who is presently in exile via popular mass protests assisted with external support. This then will forever put an end to the masses of Iran chanting “death to America” and “death to Israel.”

Today, America’s position towards Tehran is much closer to Israel’s position. A nuclear deal is presently off the table and tensions between America and Iran are at an all-time high, after the International Court of Justice ruled that it has no jurisdiction over the $1.75bn in frozen assets from Iran’s central bank held in a Citibank account in New York, even as they ordered the US to compensate Iranian companies who had their assets frozen. The United States argued last year that the case should be dismissed because Iran had “unclean hands” and the asset seizures were a result of it sponsoring “terrorism,” stressing that the money was being given in compensation to the victims of the 1983 bombing in Lebanon and other terror attacks linked to Iran.

Given that the opening of the new Azerbaijani Embassy in Tel Aviv helps to strengthen a regional axis against Iran, the Iranians are outraged by it. Since the grand opening of the Azerbaijani Embassy, it has been reported in the media that Iran is up in arms, after Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen called for a “united front against Iran” and Baku was silent about it. This comes after an Iranian was found to be responsible for attempting to assassinate an Azerbaijani MP, the Azerbaijanis detained 40 people suspected of spying for Iran and the Azerbaijanis closed down their embassy in Tehran, after it was targeted in a brutal terror attack, which killed a security guard. At the moment, relations between Baku and Tehran are quite tense, with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev outspokenly supporting the right of South Azerbaijanis to be educated in their mother tongue in the wake of violent protests against the Ayatollahs regime, of which many Azerbaijanis support.

Former Israel Consul General to Turkey Eli Shaked added in an exclusive interview regarding the new Azerbaijani Embassy in Tel Aviv: “This is a strategic cooperation between two countries that share a common threat coming from Tehran. Even though Azerbaijan is a Shia country, nevertheless, they feel that Iran is challenging them with its religious fanaticism. They are not interested in having such a radical religious influence on their population. From the Israeli point of view, Azerbaijan is a big and important country in the area bordering Iran. So, it is a common interest by the two countries to have good relations and cooperation, not only military but also strategic. Let us hope for the best. It is a crazy world and a crazy Middle East.”

Prominent French historian Dr. Maxime Gauin noted however that the cooperation between Azerbaijan and Israel does not only revolve around Iran: “One of the challenges of Azerbaijan in the liberated territories is to improve agriculture and to export as soon as possible. Israel has hi-tech agriculture, but limited space. So there is a beginning of a deal that Israel will provide the technology and Azerbaijan will provide the goods. This is a long term strategy that will continue even if the mullahs collapse. Another issue is that Azerbaijan played a key role in the reconciliation between Turkey and Israel. This can serve as an important triangle for the national security of the two countries.”

Spivak noted that the new Azerbaijani Embassy in Tel Aviv will also open up the door for further cooperation between the two countries in the field of higher education: “Previously, Ambassador Mukhtar Mammadov was the chief of staff in the ministry of education. This can be very helpful for the exchange of students. Azerbaijanis can come to study in Israel and Israelis can come to study in Azerbaijan. There can also be cooperation between the universities initiated.” Ioffe also noted that there can be more cultural cooperation: “I think that there will be more opportunities not only in the musical arena, but also for actors, opera, ballet, etc. The first ballet was written in Azerbaijan, so Azerbaijan has much to offer related to this.”

Naturally, having a Shia majority country open up an embassy in Tel Aviv and establishing normal relations with the Jewish state sends a positive message to the entire region, stressing the importance of continuing the Abraham Accords and having additional countries make peace with Israel. This will greatly assist the Jewish state as it hopes to expand the Abraham Accords to include Indonesia, Somalia, Niger and Mauritania. And by expanding the list of countries seeking peace in the Middle East, the United States will benefit from a more secure atmosphere in the region, especially as this helps to reduce Iranian influence in the wake of the Iranian-Saudi reconciliation agreement.

Rachel Avraham is the CEO of the Dona Gracia Center for Diplomacy and an Israel-based journalist. She is also the author of “Women and Jihad: Debating Palestinian Female Suicide Bombings in the American, Israeli and Arab Media.”